Salman Khan, the founder of the popular online-lecture repository called Khan Academy, was named one of four winners of the 2012 Harold W. McGraw Jr. Prize in Education. Khan, whose influential library of free videos has attracted major foundation support, hundreds of thousands of subscribers, and some criticism from college professors, will receives a $50,000 prize at an award ceremony last month.

The Prize was established in 1988 to honor Mr. McGrawâ€™s lifelong commitment to education, and to mark the Corporationâ€™s 100th anniversary.

The Khan Academy website now provides selfpacing software and unlimited access to over 3,000 instructional videos covering everything from basic arithmetic to college level science and economics. Itâ€™s the most-used library of educational videos on the web, with over 5 million unique students per month, over 150 million lessons delivered, and over half a billion exercises completed. Over 15,000 classrooms around the world are also using Khan Academy to help build student mastery of topics and to free up class time for dynamic project based learning.

Khan was recently profiled by 60 Minutes and recognized by TIME Magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world.